Kenneth Watkins AM, Director of Philanthropy, The Australian Ballet

Our guest for this episode is the wonderful Kenneth Watkins AM, Philanthropy Director at The Australian Ballet and probably one of Australia’s best known fundraisers in the arts. He has worked tirelessly for the Ballet for more than 30 years, 17 of those as a member of the Executive team.  During this time, he has made a strong contribution to the vision, values and strategic objectives of the company. He has led the philanthropy team to increase the profile of The Australian Ballet as well as to ensure it has the resources to be one of the world’s premier ballet companies.

---

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome to How Howard Can It Be. I'm Frankie Airy. I'm Marie Simandil, and together we are Philanthropy Squid Academy.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Our guest for this episode is Kenneth Watkins, AM, Director of Philanthropy at the Australian Ballet. Kenneth has been with the ballet for over 30 years, over which time he's overseen a steady growth in private support, surpassing corporate sponsorship 10 years ago and never looking back. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

What is the next big thing in fundraising? Is there a particular trend that we need to be aware of? Is there a silver bullet?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Yeah, what's what's the big new thing in philanthropy today? And I think things evolve and change consistently as the generations change, as the sort of the more global community changes. And today we're more global than ever. What changes consistently is the impact on wealth, transfer of wealth, how people make their money, and all that sort of stuff. So the baby boomers now are at the point where wealth is transferring, or that people have made a lot of money and they've given an amount of money to their families and there's still some left. Is there a silver bullet? What is it? The silver bullet is people giving themselves. And so from our point of view, as the people that work on the inside of organizations or institutions that are looking for growth and support through people's philanthropy benefaction advancement, it's the human touch which doesn't change. You know, you have to have a long-term view. When people say to me, talk to me about five-year strategic plans, for example, I say a five-year strategic plan is a short-term opportunity to fundraise for a generation of giving. So people will give for 25 or 30 years because that's their ability to be able to do that. So fundamentally, I don't think there's a silver bullet to this. It's a long-term game. Uh, it's a long-term relationship. Uh, and the longer the long-term relationships, the more successful you are as a fundraiser in an organization that requires funds.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

We're very macro and we're very global in our thinking. So we often get asked by smaller organizations how can we compete for donors with the macro things like climate, like health, like welfare, like whatever. How do we sit next to those things? This this is an aspect of society you're making an investment in. You're not simply providing a charitable gift. There's a difference between charity and philanthropy, I think, and the thinking through as to what the actual investment in the society in which you live.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

I'm never concerned about the big beast that's going to save the world against the small one that's going to be in your community and where you go on Saturday night to enjoy yourself. They're two completely different motivations and they both have a very strong narrative.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

It's good when uh the development staff have actually had some uh longevity with the organization. Now, obviously, you're an exemplar of that. Um, I wonder if you could just tell the story about what are the milestones that actually shifted the company's thinking about how philanthropy works and how really to get the best return on investment um in your time.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

I took over the responsibility of the philanthropy in 1997. And uh, you know, I know in about 1994 we were around 300,000 a year, thinking we're doing a great job. Today, uh our um philanthropy and annual giving is around four to four and a half million a year, give or take. The biggest impact was the change in the way we were restructured, talked about, and looked at and and had the organization feel about philanthropy inside the organization. And that was strategically changed by Valerie Wilder, who was the executive director from about 2008 for five years. And she came in from America, North America, and said, you know, you're all doing a great job, but you know, you're running a cottage industry here. We engaged with Frankie and Helen Woods, with Valerie, and we sat down and we had that external impact from Frankie and Helen, but rebuilt a roadmap of what philanthropy could look like at the Australian Ballet from uh a university, taking on the university structures, taking on the North American structures, and building something that might work in the Australian context. We remodeled the whole team. We spent half as much money again on the team to actually engineer the team up. And then we embarked on a campaign uh for our 50th anniversary. And uh we did a feasibility study, you know, it came back. The least you could expect is 14 million, and the most you could expect was 42 million, and we ended up with 53 million. So, in uh notify requests, gifts, and pledges. In day one, when I said to Valerie, I said, Oh, you know, this is so overwhelming. And she just leaned on the table and looked at me, she said, Kenneth, just start. Just start. Don't worry about the big, hairy, audacious figures, don't worry about the goals, think about the people and what we're gonna say to them. So that one moment in time when we change the shape of the philanthropy team, that has from that point in time has grown to the point where it's the second largest contributor in revenue to the company.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

So if you invest, you raise.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

You do.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

We still need the narrative behind it. It's not just um it's not just hiring a series of wizards and giving them a wand.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Yes, that's right. There was this sort of thought bubble, and Frankie, you were a part of this uh and very much part of this, was that we would have a services part of the team and the philanthropy team, and then you'd have your fundraisers. So what you took away from your fundraisers was the muddling around thinking, God, if I invited that person, am I God to acknowledge them? Oh, did I order the canopies? All that stuff. You had people that sat behind the fundraisers, and still we still do, that do the thanking, the banking, the cocktails, the canopies, and the acknowledgements. That's all done. And it's done very systematically and in rote. Uh and the fundraisers are provided with all the information that they need on an ongoing basis so that they're talking to the donor at a specific time uh in the year, so that you don't get to the end of the year and say the donor says, I only hear from you every time you want some money. But we have several things in place that people don't feel like that. They feel like that they're involved, they're informed, and they're cared about.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

We often find there's there's a little bit of confusion between day-to-day planning and long-term strategic thinking in terms of what the two will do and how it actually helps to balance operational funding, day-to-day, annual giving versus long-term major giving. What is your thinking around?

SPEAKER_00 6:35

I can talk for an hour about that.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Could you tell us a little? Please do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Well, you know, um, when we started to shift the way we thought about the Australian ballet, when I took over in 97 and we started to, and I I made the annual giving program the holy grail of our fundraising effort. And you could do two things. You could have a major gift campaign and shift very quickly, or you can build an annual giving program. And that's where most of your people are. So today, for example, we have about three and a half thousand regular donors into the annual giving program. I'm never worried about the um the average gift and all that stuff. Uh, what I'm worried about is people engage with the with the company in a way that impacts regularly the um the annual operating budget. And taught by Frankie, every time you ask for an extra gift, you know, you don't say, would you like to give to this and then say, Oh, well, I won't give for that, I'll give to this. You say, in addition to your gift that you're already doing, which is your most important gift, would you like to do something else in the major gift area as well? It might be to build a new ballet, it might be to build the reserves of a regional touring fund where they're endowment-type reserves, where we're taking the four cent dollars every year to put back into other parts of the business. So we have built the annual giving program, a very, very solid base. We've had other programs running alongside that, like our ballet ambassador program. And I said we cap those at 100 in Sydney and 100 in Melbourne. Otherwise, you will start to destroy your annual giving program because people want to shift from one to the other. No, that's not happening. You're going to your lowest end donors and looking for the bequest opportunity, somewhere in the higher end, but there's a lot in the lower end. And, you know, when you're feeding people through your annual giving program from, you know, small amounts of money to up to $25,000 a year, it's the $25,000 a year donor that probably has the capacity for a million-dollar gift over five years. That's the sort of rhythm that we've created here. Um, but the annual giving program is the most important program, uh, even though it doesn't raise all the money, but that's where the people are.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

We often talk about the revolving door of the fundraiser.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

How do we retain good staff, number one, and how do we actually introduce new people to the sector, new fundraisers?

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Look, that's a really good question. Um, the world needs to understand, and I think universities do very well, but the art sector particularly need to understand that if you want to have a sustainable philanthropic or benefaction or whatever you however you want to position this, you have to be considered an equal professional as to a CFO, an ED, an artistic threat. You absolutely have to be equal to that. Otherwise, you're undermining uh undermining everything. Um, I think we've gone the past the fact that boards more generally don't have any experience in this sort of sector, the philanthropy sector. There's a lot of board members that still don't have that personal experience with fundraising or being charitable. But there are always now some people on boards that are, and it's a it's also now considered as a board skill that's required. That then raises the profile of the importance of the activity in your organization. And then, you know, they start to look at the figures and then they start to understand, well, to raise that, and I always say I try to run the department at 20% of money banked. Some would say that's high, some would say that's low. I say, what's wrong with a uh 80% net profit in anyone's business? It doesn't matter what you're talking about. I'm always looking for how we can keep that cost low. But you really have to pay people properly to keep them in their organizations.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

I absolutely agree with you. Absolutely. And certainly the universities have you know sort of raised the bar. And exactly the same thing happened in the UK. When I started out, the universities started doing it, and for a while they vacuumed up all of the talent. But then after the talent had been through a turn, they actually began to dis disperse throughout the rest of the sector. So I think looking back over 15, 20 years, you can see a net growth in remuneration for fundraisers across the board. It's still not where it should be outside of the university sector. So the thing that gets me though is it's not just money that keeps a good fundraiser in a good organization. It's actually how they are valued by the organization and how uh how much woven through the fabric of the organization fundraising really is. Because again, you can pay somebody really well, but lock them in a leathered room and say don't come out until you've got a million dollars in the bank. Um it doesn't matter how well you're paid, they were not going to hang around.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

That's exactly right. So uh the late Libby Christie, who followed Valerie Wilder, she made a strategic imperative in a strategic plan across five years that philanthropy be embedded in the organization across all departments. So that was a really poignant shift as well. We we'd built this thing, you know, we were doing really well. And then the imperative was that the whole of the organization had to understand it. And if I walked into a room or one of my team walked into a room, oh, what do you need? You know, how can we help you? Can we talk to that person? So that's really necessary in any institution today. So that's about the equality of that department alongside of the reason why you exist uh as an entity.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

What's your experience when the fundraiser is not at the leadership table? It's not at equal level like that.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

It means the organization is suffering in its ability to create a narrative about how it deals with this community because it's not thinking about its community. And the community is not just ticket sales, you see. That's the point.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

Yeah, absolutely. I do wonder, I mean, again, a topic that Frankie and I talk about a lot is this idea of professionalizing the profession. What do we need to do to position this role differently? So it is taken at that executive level.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

I don't I can't think that it's not at that level. You know, I mean, I it's everywhere I go, or if I'm mentoring another organization or an individual, uh, I say if the person's not at the leadership team table, then just then I can't help the organization. It's as simple as that. And then when I say something like that, oh, they take notice.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Yeah. And to that point, Kenneth then I think the answer I think the answer to that question, uh certainly for us and where we sit in the scheme of things, is that the problem lies not with the fundraising profession, the problem lies with the people who are hiring fundraisers understanding what the job is and how to support it.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Correct. Well, the flip side is the donor can see what's going on. You know, the donor can test the temperature in the room. Around me and around all of all of us, there's some very sophisticated donors that can smell the scent in the room straight away. They may continue to support um that institution. But if the institution really took notice and embedded fundraising philanthropy and benefaction into their uh their leadership situation, the money would be much, much more. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

It's not difficult. This is not difficult.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Yes. Well, I was thinking it's interesting because we're uh we're having a conversation about this uh not so long ago around the positioning of fundraising. And if it's deemed as sales, which is the cash that you're talking about, then it's seen as transactional, not based on relationships. And so does that actually colour how we see fundraising, particularly even at board level, um, and the reticence to make an ask because it's it's sales focused versus relationship focused.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Well, those like us, like ourselves who are in this sector, there there's absolutely the point of the narrative and the and the honest relationship sharing and all those things. But there has to be how much money is coming in, how much can we get, and how can we impact the organization. So there is a there's two personalities here. I'm hungry to uh um I always want to respond and I'm always uh results orientated. Uh that's just in my DNA and the way I think. You need that, you need that sort of drive alongside to push what you really want to achieve alongside, well, you know, the best way to get that is authentic relationships and authenticity of the organization back to the donor. Once you get that formula right, which is not hard, you know, you can you can go anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Do you think Australia's culture of philanthropy plays a role here? You know, we're still we're still very much growing in this market. Do you think that is influencing how we view fundraising?

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Probably. Look, I I've seen the growth of this over the last 30 years. Um, I've been in fundraising for 35 years now. So, you know, gosh, when I started at the ballet, you couldn't even talk about a bequest or a will, you know. Now it's a now it's an easy conversation. Things have shifted and things have moved. There's more conversation around philanthropy today than there's ever been, and it continues to grow. I think the future's bright.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

I love how you referenced uh when you started, Kenneth, that you know, things weren't always as they are today, that you know, that that that dialogue has shifted.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

So when I started working at the ballet at the end of 1993, so philanthropy was one, two, three, three people, and today it's 15 people. Everyone talks about untied funding today across sectors about you know, you need rather than buying something or having something specific, it's untied funding. We've been doing it since 1994. So we started building the reserves and then dowering money and then doing things. So this journey has been a slow burn all the way through, but it was really when Valerie came in 2000, oh, you know, this is a cottage industry people, let's professionalize it. And that's what that was the real change. We were moving to five million a year very quickly and so on. So there's been many, and we've started fundraising for major productions. We started fundraising for international touring, building reserves. I wanted to um not instructed by the board or the executive director. I got sick of people knocking on my door to say, it's we're gonna want to go over to overseas again next year. Can you find us half a million? I've just given you half a million. You know, you want to you know, that old that old chestnut, you know, can you get me some more money? Not understanding. So, you know, we I started building reserves behind international touring, behind regional touring, because they'd stop knocking on my door and the money would be there.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Fantastic. Well, that's that perfect segue. Perfect segue. And you know, because we're your wonderful little book, and it's nine years, I think wasn't sure it was nine or ten. Is it going into another edition? Are you going to release some more?

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Well, people have asked uh Jennifer and I to do this, and there's always a reason why we think, oh gosh, have we got time to do this? So she wrote the book. Let's be honest. You know, I just told stories. She wrote the book and did it.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Can I ask for those who don't know about your book, maybe you could tell us a little bit about it?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

It's still downloadable. It's called Philanthropy and the Arts, and uh it was a book um co-authored by Professor Jennifer Redbourne and myself. Jennifer was my course coordinator at university from 1989 to 1992 in Queensland. I did a postgrad study focusing on um business management for arts administration. And uh she followed my career. And in 2012, she said, you must write down your story. And I said, that's impossible. I said, I'll tell my story and you can write it down. She said, Okay, let's do that. So she it's a it's a small book, it's not a big book, but it actually talks about um uh philanthropy in the general sense across an organization. It talks about the leadership of an organization, board of an organization, um, financials, artistic. Uh, and woven through that is the real stories of how we developed and grew this program from the early 90s right through to um about 10 years ago. So it's the real story of philanthropy at the Australian Ballet.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Kenneth, we're asking um our wonderful guests uh if you were to start all over again, what would you do the same and what would you do differently in the uh art and science of fundraising?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

I fell in love with the Australian Ballet when I saw it in Queensland when I was up there. I'd had seen a bit of it, but they were doing a double season of uh Anne William Swan Lake and uh Crank O's, Remy and Juliet. And that was it for me. And I did everything I could to help the company every time it came to Queensland at QPAC. I was working there in the marketing and and sales area. Someone left the company and I got I thought if I ever got to work for the Australian ballet, I will have arrived in my life. Well, I got to work there and I went there for three to five years. 31 years I've been there now, and I promised another five. So, and then that's going to be that'll be in my final curve.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

It's been lovely joining you on some of your journey, and um, and thanks for everything you've done for for philanthropy and the world of philanthropy. And thank you for sharing your wisdom. We really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

That's great. Great to be involved. Thank you both so much.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

We hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did. We'd love to hear your feedback, and we'd also welcome any ideas you may have for future topics of discussion. Our email is hello at philanthropy2.com. And if you'd like to speak with us about our new fundraising learning programs, including our hugely popular onboard program developed specifically to get boards more engaged and more involved in fundraising, we'd love to hear from you. Again, our email is hello at philanthropy2.com.